South Korea's patent office will begin classifying some of its patent documents using a system devised by the U.S. and Europe, making it the first foreign country to move toward adopting the new classification scheme, the U.S. patent office said Wednesday.
As part of a pilot program between the Korean Intellectual Property Office and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, South Korea will take the first steps toward aligning its patent documents with the Cooperative Patent Classification system, the USPTO said in a statement. The CPC system was created by the USPTO and European Patent Office and debuted in early January.
Under the pilot program, the KIPO will begin to apply the CPC to patent documents related to certain technologies for which filings with the South Korean patent office have been “especially active,” the USPTO said, adding that it would work with KIPO to determine which technologies to focus on.
“The USPTO looks forward to working with KIPO as it begins the process of classifying documents into the Cooperative Patent Classification system,” Teresa Stanek Rea, the acting director of the USPTO, said in a statement. “This pilot program highlights the excellent bilateral relationship and spirit of cooperation between USPTO and KIPO, which allows our offices to achieve significant benefits for the innovation community.”
KIPO Commissioner Young-min Kim also said that the pilot program would help build cooperation between the U.S. and South Korean patent offices.
“KIPO expects that the pilot project will help improve the quality of examination at both offices by enabling examiners to retrieve Korean patent documents more effectively,” Kim said in Wednesday's statement.
The announcement of the South Korean pilot program comes a day after Europe's patent office and China's State Intellectual Property Office signed an agreement under which the Chinese patent office would begin to use the CPC to classify newly published patent applications in January 2014.
At first, China agreed to align its patent classifications only in certain technical fields, but would aim to apply the CPC classifications across all technical areas starting in January 2016, the Chinese and European patent offices said Tuesday in a statement.
The European office and the USPTO began working together in October 2010 to harmonize the differences between the patent classification schemes used by the two governments. In January, the two offices launched the CPC, saying in a statement at the time that the new, global classification system was intended to make it easier for patent examiners and users to search for prior art.
Patent classification systems are generally made up of an index of symbols used to organize patents by different types of technology. The CPC's classification symbols are based largely on those previously used in Europe and the system was crafted to fall in line with international standards laid out by the United Nations' World Intellectual Property Office, according to the website for the CPC.
The joint classification system affects technical documents, including patent publications, and removes the need for the European office to continue classifying U.S. patent documents, the CPC's website said.
--Additional reporting by Linda Chiem. Editing by Chris Yates.
[Reference]Law360, New York (June 05, 2013)
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